admin
CHARLOTTE – It didn’t take long in the aftermath of Rory McIlroy winning the Masters last month to complete the career Grand Slam for ESPN golf analyst and two-time major champion Curtis Strange to be asked who would be next to join the club.
“I told them to take a chill pill, OK?” he said.
Strange’s point was that it has only happened six times in the modern era, and McIlroy was the first to do so since Tiger Woods 25 years earlier. And yet a chance exists to see history made at back-to-back majors if Jordan Spieth can lift the Wanamaker trophy this week at Quail Hollow Club.
“Could you just imagine if we get to the weekend and we have a possibility if Spieth plays well to have two players do this in the same year after waiting so long?” CBS’s Trevor Immelman mused. “My goodness, every eyeball in the world that loves sport and loves golf would be enthralled by that.”
Indeed, they would. Two weeks ago, Spieth, 31, shot a final-round 62 at TPC Craig Ranch to finish tied for third at the CJ Cup and spark belief that his game is rounding into form after being sidelined until February while recovering from off-season surgery to repair his left wrist, which had bothered him for 16 months.
“I’m able to pick my kids up and throw them around, and my wrist doesn’t dislocate,” he said on Tuesday when he met with the media ahead of the 107th PGA Championship. He noted that when he wakes up his left wrist feels twice the size of his right for about a half hour. “They say that stops about a year post-op,” Spieth said. “Some days are better than others.”
Jordan Spieth’s 9th chance to win Grand Slam
Spieth will be attempting to complete the career Grand Slam for the ninth time since winning the 2017 British Open in improbable fashion at Royal Birkdale and famously told caddie Michael Greller to “Go get that!” after holing a birdie bomb. Spieth’s first attempt to win the PGA since becoming one of 11 golfers to win three legs of the career Grand Slam? Here at Quail Hollow, where he finished T-28.
Spieth has only won two tournaments of any kind since the 2017 British Open and is winless in more than three years. He played the first two rounds of the CJ Cup Bryon Nelson alongside world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who is three years his junior and has been chasing Spieth’s record all his life, and watched Scheffler put on a clinic en route to winning for the 14th time on the PGA Tour and pass Spieth on the all-time win list. Spieth conceded that there is a new Sheriff in Dallas and that watching Scheffler’s dominance has inspired him.
“He came out with kind of a stone-cold truth that the guy is better than me. He didn’t used to be but he is now,” said CBS’s Dottie Pepper.
Jordan Spieth has entered new phase of life
ESPN’s Strange noted that Spieth has entered a different phase of his life. Golf is still important, but he has become a father – with a third child on the way – and his priorities may have shifted. Strange went so far as to predict that Scheffler, who has only one leg of the career Grand Slam – for winning the Masters twice – actually is more likely to be the next golfer to join the exclusive career Grand Slam club rather than Spieth, who along with Phil Mickelson, who lacks the U.S. Open on his resume, who are one leg away from immortality. “What does he have to do (to win this week)?” Strange asked rhetorically. “He has to chip and putt like we know Jordan can, and sometimes that doesn’t happen every single day. Jordan is going to be an explosive player, but maybe not as consistent as Scottie.”
Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee described Spieth’s game the last few years as being “as unpredictable as the bounce of a football.” Speaking on the podcast he does with his wife, “The Favorite Chamblee,” Chamblee recounted a conversation with Tom Knapp, executive vice president of golf at NBC Sports, who explained why Spieth is golf’s current biggest needle mover given that Tiger Woods hardly plays.
“He is the type of player where if you’re out mowing your lawn and you check your phone and go to pgatour.com and Jordan Spieth is in second or third place, you will stop mowing your lawn and you will run in to watch,” Chamblee recounted.
Spieth said he’s drawn inspiration from seeing McIlroy complete the career Grand Slam and that his game is in a better place this year to join him in that club. If there’s one reason this could be the year compared to previous ones, he noted that he’s added clubhead speed and turned the driver into a weapon. The pursuit of the career Grand Slam isn’t something he’s shying away from this week. “It’s always circled on the calendar,” Spieth said. “For me, if I could only win one tournament for the rest of my life, I’d pick this one for that reason. Something like that has not been done by many people, and there’s a reason why. But I’d love to throw my hat in the ring and give it a chance come the weekend this week.”
If he does, expect the towering pines of Quail Hollow to be rocking and rolling just as they were last month at Augusta National and for there to be a lot of half-mowed lawns around the country.
#Jordan #Spieth #eyes #golfs #Grand #Slam #PGA #Championship
